ce abandoned to
their fate. The Franks and Burgundians plundered Gaul.

Fortunately the invading tribes were on the whole a kindly race. When
they joyously whirled their huge battle-axes against iron helmets,
smashing down through bone and brain beneath, their delight was not in
the scream of the unlucky wretch within, but in their own vigorous sweep
of muscle, in the conscious power of the blow. Fierce they were, but not
coldly cruel like the ancients. The condition of the lower classes
certainly became no worse for their invasion; it probably improved. Much
the new-comers undoubtedly destroyed in pure wantonness. But there was
much more that they admired, half understood, and sought to save.

Behind them, however, came a conqueror of far more terrible mood. We
have seen that when the Goths first entered Roman territory they were
driven on by a vast migration of the Asiatic Huns. These wild and
hideous tribes then spent half a century roaming through central Europe,
ere they were gathered into one huge body by their great chief, Attila,
and in their turn approached the shattered regions of the
Mediterranean.[3] Their invasion, if we are to trust the tales of their
enemies, from whom alone we know of them, was incalculably more
destructive than all those of the Teutons combined. The Huns delighted
in suffering; they slew for the sake of slaughter. Where they passed
they left naught but an empty desert, burned and blackened and devoid of
life.

Crossing the Danube, they ravaged the Roman Empire of the East almost
without opposition. Only the impregnable walls of Constantinople
resisted the destruction. A few years later the savage horde appeared
upon the Rhine, and in enormous numbers penetrated Gaul. No people had
yet understood them, none had even checked their career. The white races
seemed helpless against this "yellow peril," this "Scourge of God," as
Attila was called.

Goths and Romans and all the varied tribes which were ranging in
perturbed whirl through unhappy Gaul laid aside their lesser enmities
and met in common cause against this terrible invader. The battle of
Chalons, 451,[4] was the most tremendous struggle in which Turanian was
ever matched against Aryan, the one huge bid of the stagnant,
unprogressive races, for earth's mastery.

Old chronicles rise into poetry at thought of that immeasurable battle.
They figure the slain by hundred thousands; they describe the souls of
the dead as rising above